This week I am mostly listening to:

Undrentide by the Medieval Baebes

Funky, folky, sassy, sexy,
Harmonies to join in with and just the right music to spin to.

What site not to visit

Surf was up and toddled round to wooly wormhead as I hadn't looked in since Christmas. Mentioned (in an ironic way) was a site called what not to crochet. Oh how I wish I hadn't let curiosity overcome me. Yuk, full of people who had nothing better to do than bitch about other people's designs and attitude to their craft. Yuk Yuk Yuk.

I felt as though I had overheard the office bitches and my stomach turned. I left a comment but I doubt that they would publish it. I hadn't come across this kind of attitude in crafters before. Naive? Probably, but I thought better of crafters than that.

Joined I love wool to take the nasty taste away.

One legged man strikes again

Hi y'all

Been soooooo busy. Leave for a weekend, house goes to pot, so much inclination to work on felt, fibre and adapting Rape of the Fair country lovely creative stuff that I ignore the chaos utterly until today when I realise that I am so cross that I cannot get inside my wardrobe because of the mountain of clothes that I have dumped on the floor in front of it. So hit the ground running this morning only to realise that I have neglected to have breakfast and got the carb shakes and now have to have something to eat and sit for a bit until the jitters go away!

Surfed around a few blogs, added on to the COTM blog/newsletter that I have taken on. A friend of mine does all the work writing the paper edition that we get in church then I go home and add it onto blogger which is linked to the COTM website, or it would be if Birdie gets around to linking it. But its out there anyway which I think is a good thing as it is a very friendly newsletter. Angela is a good writer.

Eden and Lily are upstairs watching Monsters Inc for the zillionth time and I really should get on with mundane chores. Pop on some lively music and get moving girl!

Put this together a few days ago,
ruby red merino wool,
I plied it up double and it is fab even if I do say so myself

Well... that was amazing!

Do you think that I had a good time and Ffald y Brenin? And you'd be right. It was everything that I hoped it would be. It was peaceful and fun, blessed, prophetic. There was prayer, praise, popcorn, fun, good food, games, laughing til we wept, some weeping but not lots - just enough to acknowledge old scars.
The teaching was on Esther and the characteristics of a queen who saved her people from genocide. And from that came a discussion of where women stand and how they can best operate in what can sometimes be a male dominated church system. Plus there was the usual female chat that occurs in a group of women who realise that from this time, we grow to be friends.
This time was so valuable to me because it has seemed to me in the past that I have somehow lost the knack of making friends. This weekend has shown me that that idea is not true but that I do indeed need to make more of an effort with people and that I needn't hide behind a glower as being one of the safest places when in company.

Plus from all this I have had a freshener in the awareness of the love of God. That the fact of sitting in a chapel, quietly thinking about Him and having no blaze of glory or even an overwhelming sense of His presence, but that quietness will transform into a firm step into spiritual growth. I am not even certain of what has occurred within me at this time but I do know that something has happened and I want to explore this newness with as much anticipation as I would a new home or garden or wilderness.

This cannot be a one off experience for the girls in church. I reckon I will have to organise another trip in the Autumn.

Getting ready

Off to Ffald y Brenin tomorrow. Lovely time away with the girls in church and hopefully it is going to be a rewarding time out for all of us. It can get quite cold there though and so its tempting to take everything that I might possibly wear, but we are only going for a weekend so it is annoying to have to take the entire wardrobe. There will also be four of us in the car and I want to take my wheel as well so even though my car is massive I don't want to overload. We'll see how much I can thin down the clothes.

Apart from that I need to make sure that V and the kids are well catered for or else he will let them eat absolutely anything they want to when ever they want to - Wotsits for breakfast? Sure thing. Nothing but yogurt for the next 48 hours? - Fine. Still it won't kill them just for a few days. But the state that the house is going to be in when I get back, I shudder to think. Nevertheless it does not prevent me going. I'm going and I'm going to have a wonderful time. See you when I get back!

Blaenafon Arts Festival

Went to Blaenafon today for a meeting about the Spring arts festival that they have got funding for. Soo excited, they want to do Rape of the Fair Country as it is set in Blaenafon and I get to adapt it for stage. Oh my Gosh! Its starting to hit now.

I can't wait to start.

However, it means that for the next two weeks and maybe more, the creative juices will all be targeted towards this project so I'm not sure how much I will have left over for blogging or indeed fibrous stuff. Writing needs space and time to bubble ideas and it had been so long since I had the chance to do some writing with a definate purpose in mind.

I wonder how much this blog has been the trail run at just getting a little bit of writing done per day which is such a useful excercise when planning a large/ long term project. I'd be sorry to let it go though even though no one reads this, as it is nice to chunter away into cyberspace about nothing in particular.

This week I am mostly looking at...

A Fairy's Child
by Ann Dahlgren and Douglas Foulke

I should be spinning but instead I am browsing this lovely book of ethereal photography and fairy lit quotations. A lovely way to waste time.

So much fibre, so little time

Whoo hoo, have I been busy today. V's bogged off to London on a church jolly, jammy blighter I'd love to go. Admittedly, I'd be off to the Natural History or the New Tate rather than go to a service that's probably not as much fun as Church on the Move. But I could be wrong.

Anyhoo, got the girls all to myself this weekend and spent much of today at Mum's where my little house apes have a different house to wreck. They restricted themselves to eating one bar of soap and playing in the dog's water dish. I think we all got off lightly.

Whilst at mothers I managed to get a few inches of weaving done on peggy and I felted up a sample square of the merino/possum blend that I got yesterday from Winghams. The colour was what I would call hoover dust and that is not my thing so I jazzed it up with a snatch of kid mohair in Summer fruits. I think it came out well. I hardened it off properly and it is extremely fine but very flexible. I think it would make quite a good hat felt. Looking at the square I could see a little skull cap appear out of it. All I need now is a hat last. I wonder if someone in the Guild has one I could borrow?

from top clockwise
silver grey merino with parrot acrylic; tiny square of fawn cashmere
& wool/possum blend overlaid with kid mohair

Signed up to the Spinning Wheel web ring and apparently I'm in. (dances a little jig) Apparently I have to log onto another site and add a few more details but I am such a net illiterate I have no idea what I am really supposed to be doing. I will have to wait for V to come home and show me what to do.

Other webby stuff I have done, I have signed up to become a vendor on amazon. I popped a book up for sale this morning, on a whim really, I didn't think it would go at all but by golly, it's gone already. I'm really good at this amazon lark, so I ordered myself a crochet book with the proceeds of the sale. Bread out on the waters in practise as it were. I reckon I must have floated a bakery by now.

It's getting late now so beddy byes for me.
Nos da my lovlies

The one legged man

Cherry red merino, silver grey merino, royal purple merino, tussah silk in seascape, mardi gras, and firelight, samples of merino and possum, norwegian sliver, scoured jacobs fleece, mulberry silk noil, botany sliver. Yes, its Wingham delivery day.
I'm going to be busier than a one legged man in an arse kicking competition.

Had my eyebrows waxed today and it was agony - and I've had three kids. Gonna be a long while 'fore I do that again!

Random Rod

Not a big fan of Rod Liddle usually but yesterday, flattened by vertigo, I was trawling through back copies of the Sunday Times Review as the horizon was lurching up and down and I came across this and thought it was amusing

She was obviously unamused, her smile was like winter sunshine glinting on a coffin lid.
R.L.

I liked that.

The room is still showing a tendency to spin but I am getting used to it now. Just as well really as the doctor says there is nothing that can be done really and it might take up to three weeks to clear up.

Vertigo

I left yesterday's felting workshop a little depressed really. Apparently I've been doing it right up to a point but then have been omitting a vital point - the hardening off- and as a result, almost everything I have made will fall apart very shortly. How embarrassing. So today I planned on redoing bro-in-laws Christmas scarf altogether as it was too small anyway and after hardening off it would shrink further so I suppose that I might eventually be able to make a purse out of it.
Anyway, decided on the fibre and design, stripy black and white in Jacob top, got it all laid out on the table and ready to go when that bloody vertigo that has been chasing me for the past few days finally saw its chance and bit me on the backside.
I feel wretched, it's like being badly drunk and I've bypassed the giggles, the flirts, the dancing and singing and gone straight to the wobbly and sick (a place I might add that I haven't visited since my student days) and now Lily has clambered up on my lap and she is distressingly posset scented and the last thing I feel like doing now is washing, changing and cleaning up even only a faintly yukky infant.

Marvellous my darling V is back from work with an armful of shopping and permission for me to leave it all and go and lie down.
Think I'll crawl off right now

Bits and bobs Sunday

Felting workshop tomorrow at Ponty Cross courtesy of Marge. Lots of prep to do today, sort out the bag of odds and ends. Get that drum carder out and tart it all up. Winkle out the turkish delight wool so that I can do something wonderful with it with the help of an expert.

Also kids back to school, well one kid at least, the others off on Thursday and we'll see how that goes. Could be a nightmare - for the teachers I mean.

Checked out myspace today, what a nasty place it is too. The language for a start... and some of these are church kids I know myself. I could feel the twinset and pearls coming on, handbag clutched and smelling salts out girls. But seriously, I didn't fancy it meself. I like it right fine just here.
See ya

This week I am mostly looking at:

Snow Crystals
WA Bentley and WJ Humphreys

2453 illustrations of snowflakes and other ice formations. I've wanted it for months but it seemed such a frivolity. However, I needed to bump up an Amazon order to qualify for free postage and I had some Christmas money left over, so here it is. At least it doesn't encourage me to spend more money, which a book on chickens would have. It has been a while since I did reading for any length of time and even thought the text is barely there this book keeps me quiet for hours


This also kept me quiet, and gave me a bad back 'cos I did not work in a sensible position but hunched over it on the floor. Anyway, not bad for an evening's work by a complete novice eh?

The New Toy

Took delivery of the new peg loom today. Rose veiwed it with deep suspicion. How can you weave on that? It's just a lump of wood and a few sticks. Search me, I have to read the instructions but it seems fairly self explanitory.

The wool that came with it really is a mixed bag. There some white fleece that is quite good, some Welsh black thats not too kempy, some brown and cream that looks like Orkney and some grey that just has to be Herdwick because I have never felt anything that has come off a sheep that felt so much like brambles in all my life - its the fibre equivalent of a torture chamber! But it is still interesting and a bargain as I want to experiment with unspun fleece to weave with.

Such fun: it's a shame I have so many chores to do before I can play.

Zac, however, is taking it easy

See ya!

Garrams

Garrams is a weirdly surprising place. In the middle of an industrial estate outside Crosshands is a quite a large crafty place, beads, cardmaking, all sorts of paint, wool, patterns and fabric. Its like a tardis there. So went to pick up Mum's Bernina which had gone in for repair and I picked up some fantastic yarn for the peg loom that I ordered yesterday over e-bay.

Rose bought some good stuff for her loom too. Fuzzy red flamenco style yarn being the snazziest. I wish that I had bought some now.

Elizabeth

In a glass capsule filled with stones and vegetables lives the sparkly golden fish stick...
This the earth tigger loves

From Dr Xargles book of Earth Tiggers

Happy New Year

I've had a very happy New Year actually, spending my Christmas money on books and wool, combining three of my favourites in one activity. Ordered a coffee table book on snowflake photography that has been on my wishlist for months, an Anne Geddes calendar and even geekier than all that - Narnia top trumps. Terrible I know.
I prefer to get craft books from the library now as I have been bitten by falsely glowing reviews on amazon before and often ended up with clunky designs and old info.

Then I hit the Winghams site and had a happy hour in La La Land before pruning the order ruthlessly and bringing down to only just over budget rather than laughable. Still, good thing they are closed until next Monday at least and I suppose their phone is going to be red hot when they are open once more. Add to that the back log and it will probably be half way through January before I get the wool that I haven't even ordered yet.

Still, I've got the Shetland to keep me busy and the Jacob humbug after that and if I want to do some felting then I have my darling bro-in-law's crimbo scarf to fix (way too small for his manly neck) and Steph's mitts to make as soon as that family have recovered from the flu and are safe to approach once more.

Shetland single on louet wheel

I love spinning Shetland laceweight, so much easier, ie less slippery than merino and more culturally fitting to me than spinning silk though that is great fun too, but mostly when I am spinning silk I like to go relatively thick as it feels even softer and more luxurious.
With Shetland I imagine shawls so fine that they can be passed through a wedding ring, plus the fact that Shetland sheep are so adorable. It is a shame that it is unlikely that I will ever knit one of those fantastic garments as I just do not possess the patience or the skill necessary to succeed and I do not intend to make the garnering of such a skill into one of my resolutions, but instead would like to direct my energies into learning how to shoot.

V is very alarmed at this and I cannot think why. It's not as if I want to get a Magnum or anything, its just an interesting skill that I have never had the opportunity to investigate as it is utterly out of my spectrum. V would like me to try my hand at car maintenance if I want to get in touch with my masculine side but, while it would certainly be useful, I would feel obliged to see the entire course through, whereas if I went to a rifle range I could just go the once and if it didn't suit, I never need go there again. We might compromise and try out archery. There is a school in the Gower, not far away, but the Melyn is closer still.

Anyway, by this time next year we will know whose opinion won out.

January lies before us grey and cold and wet, with the arctic weather just waiting to pounce in February. I am one of the few people I know who enjoy January. I like the steely light, the blasted trees, the break from Christmas wind up and the calm before the storm of spring activity. I see it as a natural time of rest, dormancy, to lay in stores of fat before the next burst of activity. Its when comfort cooking reaches its peak. Sticky toffee puddings, plum crunch and cream, mash, roated squash and red pepper soup, sausages, lovely, lovely.

And then starts lambing, easter, gardening such as it is when I do it, then the long summer break and America maybe, then before we know it it is September back to school, harvest, halloween, fireworks and so the whole rigmarole starts all over again. Enjoy the peace while it lasts that's what I say.